Kitchen knife sterilizer is a handy instrument for sterilizing the knifes in hotels, restaurants and …………

Cutting fruits and vegetables doesn’t just leave a knife slick with juice and pulp; it can spread viruses to the knife if the produce isn’t clean, according to a new study. Scientists already knew that bacteria could contaminate utensils in this way, but the new study is the first to look at hepatitis A virus and norovirus, the most common cause of foodborne illness in the United States. The findings could help food safety investigators pinpoint the source of foodborne illnesses and develop new methods to prevent outbreaks.

To carry out the new study, researchers at the University of Georgia’s Center for Food Safety in Griffin set up a test kitchen. The scientists developed techniques to strip viruses off knives and graters to quantify their abundance. They measured the amount of hepatitis A virus or norovirus transferred from contaminated honeydew melons, cantaloupes, tomatoes, strawberries, and cucumbers to the knives used to cut the produce.

For all types of produce, regardless of the material and sharpness of the knife used, more than half of all samples transferred viral particles to the knife. Some combinations of viruses and produce were more likely to contaminate a knife. Norovirus was transferred more often from strawberries and cucumbers than was hepatitis A virus, for example, but melons and tomatoes transferred more hepatitis A virus than norovirus. Similar experiments on viral transfer from carrots to a grater found cross-contamination the majority of the time, the scientists report this month in Food and Environmental Virology.